Another week flew by, and the tax deadline is now getting real, even with the extra three days! Speaking of time, you can read all previous editions in the Headphoolia archives. If you have any recommendations or suggestions of what to include or exclude in these round-ups, please leave a comment or opine on Twitter.
LEARNINGS
Tyll of Innerfidelity and Headroom fame appeared eight times so far at TWiT’s “Home Theater Geeks” (HTG) with Scott Wilkinson, so they are not ignoring headphones! Of more general audio learnings interest, HTG had two back to back videos in late March 2017 with Paul Hales (of Pro Audio Technology fame) talking about audio science, EQ curves, speakers, and such. This is not headphone-specific, but there’s plenty of audio/sound talk in over 2.5 hours of total runtime. You can find these two episodes using this pre-filled YouTube Search or look up episodes #345 and #346.
Sony is partnering with The Mother of Dragons Android (The Googleleesi) to bake in their LDAC technology into the new version of Android (“Android O” (the letter, not zero)). LDAC promises up to three times as much data as the more common SBC and does not have to perform a down-conversion. So this is a good time to read a primer on LDAC at Sony’s. There are plenty of charts over there too. Already, Sony has a trio of compatible products, the MDR-1000X headphones, Walkman DAPs, and one of their Xperia smartphones.
NEWSY
Bluetooth 5 is finally getting out of the paperwork and into the real world! We have the first smartphone to officially come out with Bluetooth 5 out of the box. And it’s a big flagship, the new Samsung Galaxy S8 duo. Coverage of this at almost every tech website that went into Galaxy S8 24×7 coverage earlier in the week, including Android Central and Android Authority.
2017 looks as hard on the music industry humans as 2016, this week we had to say RIP Ikutaro Kakehashi, founder of Roland, which is now the new owner of V-Moda.
If you are wondering how on earth prices at Amazon are all over the place, the Wall Street Journal has a nice article about what really happens behind the scenes as armies of bots collide in bloody battles and skirmishes 😉
Headphones are not just for music. I’m talking over-ear headphones, not tiny wearables. Baseball teams are using Halo Sport headphones to improve their performance. Their athletic performance that is, not their singing 🙂
This sounds like an April Fool’s Day joke but it’s actually NOT! Schiit Audio is opening their first brick and mortar customer-facing store in Southern California, and you won’t believe what name they give it! It will be shocking for main stream shoppers, that’s for sure #Clickbait 🙂
REVIEWS
This is only a sampling of the action across the interweb seas of content. It is not a comprehensive listing of every review out there. That’s a full time job 🙂
RHA’s IFA 2016 new products have been ceramically slow to roll out but the CLA 750 in-ears are now reviewed by The Headfonics.
The Chi-Fi hype train is strong (and doesn’t use a lot of $gas$), here’s a look at the KZ ATR earphones by The Headfonia.
Speaking of budget, the 1More E1008 earbuds (actual earbuds) get a detailed four page review at The Headphone List. Watch out VE Monks? 🙂
Jumping up in price now, but still reasonable for planar-magnetic over ears, the Monoprice M1060s get the Zeos treatment in a new half-hour video on Le YouTube.
Speaking of new, a first look at the second generation of the V-Moda Wireless (Bluetooth) by The SoundGuys on YouTube…
More new models rolling out, here’s a 9 minute take on the second generation of the Fiio EX1 earphones by Porta Fi on YouTube (new name for the channel). It includes a comparison to the first generation Dunu Titan 1.
OPINIONS
Sometimes the Verge opinion pieces escape the whiny clickbait fodder and raise interesting points, for example, why can’t we buy trailer music from movies and TV shows?
Separately, they opine on using and depending on iTunes as your music listening system. Let’s fit all the WAVs in the world into an 8GB iPod 🙂
MUSIC STREAMING SERVICES
In a four-page article, Forbes writes about the increasing importance of Apple’s “Beats1 radio”, talking Drake, Blink-182 and more. On a related note, The Verge had an exclusive look at how Drake’s new album broke all kinds of (streaming) records with the Apple Music streaming service.
The accountants are now cheering streaming services, according to a new RIIA report, streaming made them more money (revenue) than other options.
Recommendation wars are another trend these days, even Google scooped up a couple of companies in that field, so it’s not a surprise that Spotify scooped up one too, for the underlying technology it looks like.
More and more streaming service are out there, but there is a finite population and more services have been offering family plans, making it more affordable for families/households to stick with one service instead of having multiple paying accounts. So Gizmodo, in typical Gizmodo fashion, ranks streaming services based on how much trouble they (Gizmodo) think they are. So if you are curious jump over there and ride the pono 🙂
APRIL FOOLS
The r/headphones sub-Reddit had a pretty elaborate troll, headphones with MSRPs below $200 would be banned, yes banned, from the sub-reddit. Considering the various rules there and bots actively encouraging the following of said rules, it wasn’t a surprise many believed it to be true 🙂
The SoundGuys are taking one for the team, they are risking their NDA privileges and a lawyer onslaught by revealing this magnificent uber-flagship audiophile dream-curve headphones ahead of time 🙂